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it's yuri day today!! yay!!!

i've decided that, for this special special day, i'd like to talk about something that isn't exactly yuri, but IS IN MY HEART!!!!!! and i'm not going to say some shit like madoka magica because that's so obvious.

okay firstly, just to set up what i'm saying here, yuri is a genre that focuses on intense emotional connection, romantic love or physical desire between women. BUT, more informally, yuri is a number of different things: one i would like to highlight is how it has always been less about the intention of the creator and much more about the audience's own interpretation.

reading through the lines is something we've always had to do as yurijin, from nobuko yoshiya's wink wink nudge nudge "they were roommates totally not girlfriends and they're gonna marry men when they're adults i pinky prooomiseeeee!" shoujo stories to madoka magica's more clueless "homura is prepared to time-loop forever to save her BESSSTTT FRIIIIEEEENDDDD! close female friendships are so cool!" story written by people who didn't intend for them to be yuri, but have been adopted by yurijin.

with such little to choose from, it's natural that we start to look for yuri in the nonyuri. famous yuri acafan erica friedman (my goat) even coined the phrase "yuri goggles" to poke fun at how yurijin make yuri where there is little or none in the actual series. (similar to “beer goggles,” yuri goggles make a series or a couple seem more yuri the higher you turn them up)

so let's put our yuri goggles on and see what insane things have been brewing in dear mia spreadhimejoy's brain.

shrek. it's shrek

please do not laugh at me i have a point here. and yes i am abnormally knowledgable and serious about the shrek franchise you're just going to have to live with that.

i think shrek as a character and the fairytale creatures can be applied to any sort of marginalised community. that's kinda obvious, and it's been talked about before. but i think fiona's experience in the first film is so similar to the experience of a lot of lesbians so i want to focus on that (also i will be here ALL day if i talk about the other films in the franchise or shrek as a character or the fairytale creatures like i literally cannot)

so like... here is why shrek is yuri i guess.

fiona was raised as a princess, with a life already laid out for her: a prince, who had already been picked out for her by her parents, would sweep her off her feet, they would fall in love, marry, and live happily ever after.

fiona's childhood bedroom shown in shrek 2, which she lived in until before she was locked away in the dragon's keep, has posters of princes stuck on her wall, prince and princess dolls on her mantelpiece, diaries with pages full of the name she plans to take when she's married and she plans her kids' names and on and on and on... doesn't that just read like an average girl's life? well, not the princess part. but being expected to live life in a very specifically heteronormative way and viewing your future through that lens. like fiona, you're also sold a perfect little fairy tale about life as a wife to a man and a mother to a child. she's literally like comphet extreme.

but fiona has a deep dark shameful secret: at night, she transforms into an ogre. and that's the worst thing she could ever be, because of how ogres are ostracised, mistreated, and villainised.

i'm going to compare this to revolutionary girl utena (as i do with literally everything) to help conceptualise it as a system. in the world of ohtori academy, there are the fairytale concepts of the prince, princess, and witch. the prince and princess are very much made to represent the patriarchal ideal to an extreme: the prince saves, the princess is saved. the end. the prince has agency, the princess does not. but if a girl is not a princess, aka if she has agency or defies the norm of princess, she's a witch; she's an evil force trying to wreck the beautiful sanctity of tradition, and she must be stopped.

this system can be compared to the patriarchal system of our world. being queer = being an ogre = being a witch. and to be any one of things things in each respective world is to defy what is most sacred and cherished: the traditional family.

fiona has internalised the system's idea of the ogre: she's so ashamed of being an ogre that she hides this side of her, calling herself a "horrible ugly beast", claiming that nobody could ever love her this way. her family abandoned her by sending her away to live in solitude, she is constantly fed stories about how ugly ogres are the villains in the beautiful princess and noble prince's story, and her ogreness is framed as a curse and something that NEEDS to be fixed.

so basically her family sent her to conversion therapy. like there's no denying that. but this is an extra sinister form of it, where she is given as a prize to the person who converts her, with no regards for her own choice. the conversion is completed through a kiss – is this not just a form of corrective sexual assault? fiona should have permission to kill her parents cause what the fuckkk...

when fiona is locked in the tower, i believe her fixation on the prince shifts focus to her desperation to be saved. she has a miserable, lonely life stuck in a tower for years on end, so the only thing to keep her company is her imagination and her hope. she plans how her prince will save her down to the script, and fantasises about how she will be rid of her ogre curse.

she's basically a queer woman who fantasises about being cured of her queerness, which is an experience many many many queer people can identify with.

when she gets saved by shrek, an out queer person I MEAN an ogre, (after all there's zero proof that shrek isn't just a he/him butch lesbian. you can decide how much of this claim is a joke), she's disappointed with how reality isn't measuring up to her fantasies. shrek is not following her script, and that shocks her, but when told about how she is to be married to lord farquaad (she isn't even given a choice in the matter!) she's given something hopeful to cling onto again.

but through her time travelling with shrek and donkey, we see that she doesn't actually really follow the conventions of a submissive princess even when she's not an ogre: she and shrek bond over the gross parts of herself (the parts she's ashamed of) and it's clear that fiona feels like she can be herself around him because he doesn't expect anything from her, something she doesn't share with anyone else, to the point where she's willing to tell him she's queer— I MEAN an ogre.

but before she can tell him, she's suddenly greeted with her true prince, lord farquaad. we see through her change in speech and demeanour to something more formal that she's performing a role of the princess for him. she was instantly able to speak her mind in front of shrek, but she holds her tongue in front of farquaad.

shrek, after he hears fiona talks to donkey about how "ogres and princesses don't go together" (fiona was referring to her ogre curse, but shrek assumes it was about him. which to be honest i think shrek would be valid for being mad at anyway because if she's disgusting because she's an ogre, then she's calling him disgusting too? like that's still an insult to him.okay tangent over) has a small argument with fiona where she assumes he's angry and hates her because she's an ogre but he assumes she hates him because he's an ogre... basically there's a lot of projected self hate going on. and they separate and fiona goes with lord farquaad to get married — she now has proof that her queerness I MEAN ogreness will be fully rejected by everyone, so she chooses to assimilate.

fast forward to the wedding, and she's so so unhappy, but she's so ready to assimilate that she's ignoring that feeling. but then shrek bursts through the door confessing his love for her, which buys some time for the sun to set and for her to transform into an ogre.

shrek doesn't react negatively, and fiona is happy, but farquaad then dehumanises fiona by calling her an "it" and orders for her to be locked away in the tower again for the rest of her life (which is quite literally her worst fear — even after getting out of conversion camp I MEAN the tower, she sleeps by candlelight because she's afraid of waking up in the tower again.)

then dragon eats farquaad blah blah blah he's out of the picture.

and fiona makes an extremely difficult choice here: the choice between assimilation and authenticity. she can either live unhappily as something she's not and receive love for it, or live happily as herself but receive scrutiny and hate for it. and she chooses the latter. why? because shrek affirmed that her real self is worthy! and this helps her take the first step into beating comphet (is there even an ogre equivalent of this?) and starting to love herself.

people do often say "if you can't love yourself then nobody can love you" but i think that sometimes, the first step to learning to love yourself is being shown that your worthy of it.

to identify as a lesbian is to reject what has been laid out for you. it is inherently radical to live outside of that traditional family structure, and it can be so daunting to have to face how the world will treat you. but isn't it easier when you have people around you that can remind you that you're not worthy of that mistreatment?

the path to yuri is one paved with self discovery, and fiona and shrek both encompass that. so like, maybe they ARE yuri! and maybe is shrek is a he/him butch lesbian. nobody can tell me otherwise!

okay yayay thank you for reading i think the ending is a bit rough but im learning…. happy yuri day my dear yurijin!